


Foresight

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fable (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:20:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I hypothesise that every major player in Fable III has seen the Crawler in some form before the endgame. In typical fashion, Reaver falls right into his lap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foresight

Reaver snaps a hand to his forehead in an aggravated salute, shielding squinting eyes from the sun. Only two minutes off the ship, and already beads of sweat prick at his hairline and the nape of his neck. The thin, colourful wraps that the Aurorans wore to court, the garments at which he'd snickered whilst preening in his fur-trimmed longcoat, suddenly seemed... _desirable_.

"What are you looking at? Let's go," he snaps at his agape attendant, who was more accustomed to the stuffy opulence of Reaver's mansion than he was to anything else. "I shan't be spending much time here, I can see that already..."

Golden mounds rise up around them and the sand no longer sucks at Reaver's feet; hammers and chisels strike against stubborn stone, louder and louder. Harmonious voices chant to the rhythm of the strikes, Auroran workers with high morale and robust voices; the Albion-hired workers are markedly silent and sombre as they lend their hands. The sun, unobscured by Bowerstone Industrial's plumes of thick black smoke, wears them down and scalds their pallid skin.

A collective tremor runs through the workers as Reaver's passage is noticed. He removes his coat -- as thin as it is, it is not thin enough -- and his hat and shoves them into his attendant's waiting arms, rolling up silken sleeves and glowering up at the wooden scaffolds. The construction was coming along well. There was no need to deride their method of working, if it was serving them well. The quicker they were done with this foolish endeavour, the better.

"Save your insufferable songs, there is no cause for celebrating yet," he shouts anyway, waving a hand irritably at the surreptitiously staring labourers.

He leans around a shadowy corner. In the middle of what appears to be a blessed spot of shade, a stall of some sort can be seen, just barely. "If that is a drink vendor, I will save my cursing of this unforgiving land for another time," Reaver breathes with fervent hope, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows.

A hush settles, settles over the watching labourers like falling feathers, barely perceptible until they've already fallen and covered the ground. Reaver's attendant glances over a hunched shoulder fearfully, catches the slanted eye of a painted worker who merely smirks mirthlessly and returns to her sculpting. "Er... Master Rea--?"

"Come, now, quit dragging your feet, I haven't all day," Reaver admonishes with a quickened tone, finding new energy as he stabs his cane into the tamped sands, bringing him and his reluctant attendant closer t--

"Oh for the love of..." The curses Reaver gears up to utter die in his throat as the shade deepens. It's a blessed relief from the sun, he admits as he dabs rivulets of sweat with a monogrammed handkerchief, but he could have sworn the stall was closer.

"Master Reaver, if I may, I... don't believe this is the best of idea--"

"If _I_  may, and oh, I may -- I didn't hire you for your opinionated personality," he interrupts pointedly, and strikes forward again. He _will_  have his drink.

 _Thirsty, yes? So far from your home and your creature comforts, so, so far..._

Reaver halts in his tracks, cruel lips manifesting the beginnings of a curl. A vendor with such an unbecoming voice? So far from home, indeed.

"Spare me. Have you anything worth drinking in this infernal desert?" He soldiers on with determination. He _will_  have his drink.

 _Mm... for a price._  Reaver is squinting again, and it takes him a moment to realise that whilst the sun was fading, so was _any_  semblance of light. _You will be drinking deeply of the pools of forgetfulness soon... foolish shadow-son..._

These Aurorans and their pathetic charades. "Oh, to hell with it. I don't have to deal with this." He turns around, but he can't be sure he's actually turned; behind him looks exactly the same, and his attendant is nowhere to be found. A tinny _clink_  sounds where he'd previously been, and Reaver thinks he sees the gleam of his goggles.  
Questing fingers scrabble for the lapels of his coat, to tug them closed as a chilly rivulet of sweat trickles down his spine. He remembers too late.

 _Come closer, shadow-son! You know much about the darkness, do you not? But there is always much more to learn... come, the children will teach you...!_

"Bugger off," Reaver murmurs distractedly, and is dismayed to find that his voice isn't as strong as it had been. He takes a few purposeful steps towards what he thinks is the direction he'd come. Voices surround him, voices like snakes slithering over shed skins, like the creak and grind of hollow men's bones against each other, like the rattle of a pneumatic's breath... his damp hand closes around the handle of his pistol, deft fingers tripping the closure of the holster. "Stay away from me!"

He sees them now, eyeless apparitions with gaping, sorrowful mouths and questing fingers; he whips the pistol up and around, fires once, twice. They keep coming.

 _Don't anger them, shadow-son. They have much to show you! About us, about your beloved, doomed Albion, about you..._

He backpedals, but they're quicker, and legion besides; fingers like icicles creep around the back of his neck, up his exposed wrists, under his waistcoat, into his _eyes_. They sigh, a sigh like dead leaves crackling, like breath leaving the expiring body. Reaver stiffens, trembles, struggles reflexively, but they're pulling him down, pulling -- but what is down? What is up? What is sight, vision, light?

 _Do you see? Do you see--!_

\--x--

"Shh. He's coming 'round. Breathe, now, you're all right..."

Consciousness oozes into Reaver's body like tainted oil, and he fights awareness with the fear of a man who's seen too much too soon. A trembling hand snaps to his neck first, still feeling the frigid fingers of the darkling children; the other hand fumbles for his eyes, sinking in, digging--

"No, stop! Mara, help me hold him!" He struggles against their gripping hands, patiently at first, and then with greater fervour. He'd seen. Oh, he'd seen, and he wished to see no longer...

" _Reaver_! Stop it!" The utterance of his name is like an incantation, bringing him back to fuller awareness, bringing pain and instinct and his voice, his voice full of words, full of the need to spill them so that he might be purged of them.

"It's not going to happen to me, I _refuse_  to let it, I've made my deal and kept my promises, I'll always look like this, _always_ , my skin won't fall off my bones and my muscles won't atrophy, my... my _hair_  will not fall out, my eyes will not grow cataracts, my..." Kalin and Mara take reluctant steps backwards as Reaver lurches to a sitting position, and then off the covered stone slab. As disturbing as it is to witness, it is necessary. "I am _protected_ , you know! I am not some lowly peasant, I am _connected_! I... I will never... I cannot... _decay_..." He crumples, sags, sits heavily on the slab, a wreck of a man with wide, reddened eyes and rumpled garb. "And if Albion... if Albion..." A shudder racks his body, and Kalin steps in, gently pushes him back to a supine position. She knows what he's seen; Logan saw before him, and Walter, and the new Queen.

Kalin nods at Mara, who again commences murmuring evocative words over his shivering form.

"Her Majesty needs your help," Kalin asserts in her firm, androgynous voice. Reaver whimpers something, and she places a hand on his forehead to quell him. "Whether she saves us, the Aurorans, is up to her. But it is up to _you_ and her whether she saves Albion."

Reaver wants to snap back at her, something about not being a saviour, something about not caring. Something about only pretending to be annoyed with the Queen when she makes her righteous decisions, merely because he wishes to see the Old Quarter go unrestored or because he has qualms against children being educated, not because it means he'll have to sneak to fill the royal coffers late at night with money of his own...

But he sleeps instead, sleeps instead of uttering lies, as Mara draws the Crawler's poison from his mind and already-stained soul; sleeps as the Crawler and his children draw ever-nearer to fair, beloved shores.


End file.
